I searched some on google and I can't seem to find out "how" they do it.

An average 12-ounce serving of a "domestic-style" beer contains about 14 grams of ethanol and 11 grams of carbohydrate. In caloric terms this equates to 98 kcals from ethanol and 44 kcals from the carbohydrate, for a total of 142 kcals. The most effective methods of making lower calorie beer involve reducing the alcohol content, residual carbohydrate or, most commonly, a combination of both.

I would like to keep the highest alcohol% as possible and just remove the carbs.

yaturaz wrote:I searched some on google and I can't seem to find out "how" they do it.

An average 12-ounce serving of a "domestic-style" beer contains about 14 grams of ethanol and 11 grams of carbohydrate. In caloric terms this equates to 98 kcals from ethanol and 44 kcals from the carbohydrate, for a total of 142 kcals. The most effective methods of making lower calorie beer involve reducing the alcohol content, residual carbohydrate or, most commonly, a combination of both.

I would like to keep the highest alcohol% as possible and just remove the carbs.

I suspect that using Beano will dry out your beer too much. Those carbs you want to get rid of actually consist of unfermentables that are ordinarily desired in a beer because they provide body and mouthfeel, and probably some malty flavor, too. Since you have no practical way to control the Beano -- to measure how much it has worked and then denature the enzymes (you'd need to heat your wort up to a temperature high enough to denature them, which could be as high as 160F to 170F) -- then you are likely to end up with a beer that is completely devoid of carbs. And of course, you will not only be removing the carbs, but you will actually be replacing them with roughly an equivalent amount of alcohol measured in calories (44kcals from carbs replaced with 44kcals in alcohol). What a nasty sounding beer, in my opinion. Now, there are better ways to accomplish your goal. First, if you are an all grain brewer, mash at a lower temperature. The closer your mash temp is to 132F, the drier your resulting beer (more alcohol and less unfermentable dextrines). You could experiment with mash temps, such as 145F, then 140F, then 135F until you find the right balance of taste and alcohol to suit you. If you are an extract brewer, just replace a portion of your extract (which contains a percentage of unfermentables) with quantities of sugars which are nearly 100% fermentable, such as regular white table sugar, or corn sugar. Or you could skip malt altogether and just ferment sugar water with a little bit of yeast nutrient to keep it going.

Ahh some good info there. I all grain brew and I am trying to make a light beer for my friends that only drink that !@#$. I'll try the different temps and I am going to give the beano a shot in my next lager.

Looking at this thread again, I realized that I just made the assumption that you would add the Beano to your fermenter; seems like doing it that way has been discussed a number of times in the past, and that's why I mentioned the difficulty of denaturing it -- having to heat your finished beer. But then it occurred to me that you could probably also add it to your mash tun, but that might make it a completely unmanageable task -- even for experimentation -- without data to guide you.

For instance, we know that galactosidase (Beano) works at body temperature; it is likely to work ... and work even faster ... at mash temps, but what is the actual temp range, the _optimum_ temp, and denaturing temp, and how do they compare with those for alpha-amylase and beta-amylase? More over, how much do you add for a beer recipe, i.e., how much unfermentable sugars will you typically produce via the natural amylases from a given recipe and mash schedule, and, within the time-frame and temperatures of that mash schedule how much Beano will it take to do the job ... or more precisely, do the job to the extent that you want it done, such as cleaving only half of the unfermentables before denaturing, rather than all of them like it would probably do in a fermenter.

This is not a topic that I've ever seen discussed to that depth, so you probably aren't going to find much data. I did a quick google myself, and finding stuff is getting harder and harder than it used to be. Good luck.

A ß-glucanase rest, around 115°F at the beginning of the the mash, should accomplish the same thing as the bean-o, but probably more reliably. If you wanted to try adding bean-o to the mash, I imagine 115°F would be about the optimal temperature.

One of the big problems associated with adding bean-o to the beer after the boil is that it continues to work slowly at room temperature. This can lead to a constant generation of fermentable sugars after bottling. This can cause bottle bombs.

The biggest secret is probably using mostly-to-only base malt and mashing at ~140°F for about 90-120 minutes (it will take longer to break down all the starches at a lower temperature). Maybe bump up to 155°F or so, for about 15' at the end, to make sure all the starch is broken down.

This will tend to make a thin, tasteless beer, though. I prefer to make low calorie beers by making low OG beers that are packed with flavorful grains, but that's me. Having too little alcohol never seems to be my problem.